


Prompts combined: Eggplant and purple

by hallwayperson



Category: The X-Files, X-Files - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Drabble, F/M, Ficlet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-03
Updated: 2017-10-03
Packaged: 2019-01-08 15:21:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12256974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hallwayperson/pseuds/hallwayperson





	Prompts combined: Eggplant and purple

_Eggplant._

He can’t for the life of him remember the context. He taps the bent edges of the little square post-it note as if it’ll magically make him remember. It’s purple. He does remember why it’s purple of all colors. She had picked it out when they had been out shopping right after they had moved into their new home.

“I want something that doesn’t make me think of the basement,” she had said. And he had complied, of course, because this was a new start. He had wanted it as much as she had. At least that was what he had been thinking and he had believed in it. Part of him still does. Or maybe he just likes the idea of it.

_Eggplant._

It’s Scully’s writing. He has never asked her about her favorite color and suddenly it seems like the most important thing in his world. He wants to pick up the phone and call her, like old days, even if it’s late - especially because it’s late. Or he wants to head upstairs only to realize she never left and she’s sound asleep in the middle of the bed. He crumbles the note and throws it in the trash. It’s just a word. It won’t replace her, it won’t wake him up in the morning with a trail of kisses on his neck, sometimes followed by a mild giggle, and it won’t change him. It won’t bring out his favorite things about himself. She did that. She did all of that and more. And sometimes she wrote notes. They were never random. His job had been to find out why she had written them. It could take days, even weeks, but other times it was just a few minutes.

_Eggplant._

He looks at the little crumbled note in the trash. He doesn’t have it in him to leave it there so he picks it up and straightens it out. He will figure it out, he thinks, and he pins it to the wall with newspaper clippings. He sits down, sunflower seed between his teeth, and stares at it. It’s the last note she wrote before leaving and it’s been on his wall for a year. He knows the exact date because she left it there on her birthday. It’s the first time in years, he hasn’t been there on her birthday.

He reaches out for a framed picture on his desk. It’s Scully at Lake Okobogee. She’s wearing his jacket and it’s at least five sizes too big but it doesn’t matter. She’s laughing, her teeth showing, and her hair wet from a crazy downpour - like that night at the graveyard back on their first case in Bellefleur - and she’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. That’s how he feels every time he sees that picture. He carefully takes it out of the frame as if it’ll crumble in his hands at any moment and puts it on the shelf right over his head. In a swift motion he gets the purple post-it note and puts it in the frame.

He can’t remember the significance of the note, maybe it had just been a grocery list consisting of one item only, maybe it had been a playful note - she could be like that - but all of that doesn’t matter right now. With a tightness in his chest, he picks up the phone. Has it been weeks? Months? He knows it’s going to take more than a framed post-it note and a call to mend whatever’s left between them. He knows it might be too late. He knows she might have moved on but how he hopes, selfish as it is, it isn’t the case.

“Scully,” a familiar voice says at the other end of the phone and he isn’t prepared for it at all. 

Words are lost on him although he desperately wants to speak. He wants to apologize but it doesn’t seem like enough. And for what? For abandoning the only person that has ever truly been there for him? For getting lost in one futile case after another? You can’t apologize for something like that, he hopelessly thinks.

“Mulder?” the voice says.

And a tiny spark of hope flares within him. He just can’t help it. 


End file.
